Duality
by thewanderingoutsider
Summary: At first glance, one would think that they are two sides set in eternal opposition. If only people really knew how much they really had in common, or that they were still counterparts in unexpected ways. #Submission for WCFC: The "Angst" Challenge, #Short Story, #Writer's Drabble
1. Windows to the Soul

**1: Windows to the Soul**

_Prompt No. 6: "You never look into my eyes...are you scared of what you'll see?"_

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><p><strong>Bloom<strong>

**[Word count: 892]**

_Her _eyes were an insufferable contradiction. Queen Marion could never come to terms with what she saw in them. Or at least what she_ supposedly_ saw.

There was no denying the young princess was kin in flesh and blood. The DNA testing included in the princess' legitimization process had verified the girl as their undoubted offspring. But Marion hadn't needed such proof. The girl's auburn hair and slender build were bodily characteristics commonly found amongst the members of Domino's royal family. Bloom even had her grandmother's nose.

But that was it wasn't it? That was as far as similarities went. The careworn queen of Domino did her best to hide her unease around the girl but sometimes it got the better of her. Oritel had assured her again and again the uncertainties about their lost child would pass in time. Once they got to know her better.

If only she could believe him.

_"And you don't know how these…Trix managed to get free again? I know this sounds like a pointless question, dear, but the Paladins are convinced that you may know something." Oritel pressed, leaning forward slightly on his throne._

_Bloom shrugged her shoulders innocently. "I don't know what these paladins are looking for. I mean I don't design the prisons or anything, that's not my job. I just fight them off as soon as they show up somewhere."_

_"Of course… I also don't see what you could know about these criminals' escapades." Oritel stroked his chin as he glared at the scowling representative. "Perhaps the fault lies with the authorities who are supposed to be responsible for their detainment?"_

Maybe she was never supposed to know this stranger standing before them. Even at the time of her youngest daughter's birth, Marion still hadn't decided what to name her. Distraction caused by the war and their kingdom's entrapment in Obsidian were limited excuses. And what kind of mother would name their child 'Bloom'? Such a common yet queerly uncommon name...

Regardless, Bloom always conducted herself pleasingly enough to those around her. Occasionally she would slip up and do something socially unsound, but considering her commoner upbringing it was never something irreparable. Bloom was attentively mindful about what people thought about her…maybe too mindful.

Oritel did mind, once. Now Marion realised that he was only concerned since Bloom was their only heir. As Daphne was restored he had little reason to care. She could understand it; rebuilding the kingdom was important, but his queen did not approve.

_"Don't worry about these questions." Oritel put a hand on Bloom's shoulder as the guards showed the paladin representative out. "It's all just part of the professional processes, something that we have to keep up with from time to time."_

_"Is it really?" the girl chirped mildly._

_"Well in any case, your mother, Daphne and I will have some business to attend too shortly, I trust to keep yourself occupied in the meantime. We'll see you later at supper."_

_With a nod and a small curtsy, Bloom sauntered off. But not before making a small wave to her mother, who nodded in response. There was a brief locking of gazes as the queen watched her leave, right up to the last exiting step._

It would have been improper if Bloom hadn't acknowledged both her parents before leaving the throne room. Normalcy had been kept, for now.

If only the queen could keep it at that.

It was a petty topic common in the aristocratic echelons. Blue eyes were considered a degenerative trait across the royal families. The thing was, Marion couldn't for the life of her, recall Bloom having blue eyes as a newborn babe. She vaguely remembered them to be hazel like her father's.

Bloom's eyes were like oceans of pale azure. Occasionally they would sparkle, tinged with excited happiness. At least that's what they seemed to do at a quick glance. The longer she could stare into them, the Queen of Domino felt that she was being lost in a listless sea. But most of the time Marion could only see those eyes as glazed over with a strange bareness, as if to hide their abysmal nature.

Once she saw that blankness, the queen could only see deception in those smiles of that daughter of hers. That eternal stranger of a daughter.

_"If I told you a flower bloomed in a dark room, would you trust it?"_

_Flora looked at Bloom oddly as they lazed in the palace gardens. "What's that supposed to mean?"_

_"Oh," the red head looked at the Lynphean with strange refinedness "Nothing special, just a quote for you."_

_"By who?" Flora laughed._

_"An Earth musician named Kendrick Lamar."_

Idle conversation a few years past which Marion chanced to hear and never forgot. Not that the queen cared for Earth musicians. There was the chance she was reading too much into Bloom's behaviour. But Bloom certainly wasn't telling them everything.

Yet, she was too afraid to really confront her with serious questions. Bloom spoke little of her childhood and no more than necessary. And Marion wasn't sure she wanted to know the complete truth of it. Especially after seeing how disturbingly efficient Bloom was when she "played" with the tree using that knife of hers.

Perhaps Oritel had the right idea to blissfully take Bloom at face value after all.

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><p><strong>Icy<strong>

**[Word count: 899]**

Cold and sharp. A mere glance felt like enough to pierce one through. And yet those eyes were not mired by some sloppy lust for cruel amusement. There was some kind of distant vision contained within, steeled by determination. But more than that, there was strength enough to arouse reverence. And the headmistress wasn't really thinking of Icy's ancestral power.

When the Trix first summoned the Army of Decay, Saladin had told her that those criminal seniors were going to send her off into a premature retirement. Faragonda chided him there and then, but still, Griffin had to wonder.

The elder witch fiddled with her pen as she scanned the papers spread across the desk. Naturally, Ediltrude and Zarathustra protested, but Griffin assured them that the school could be headed by two headmistresses if necessary. Being the only prestigious institute left for witches free from the clutches of light mongering bureaucrats, Griffin wanted to make sure that Cloud Tower's future was secure for future generations. Hopefully if the choice she was about to make was going to end badly the school and all its occupants would not be harmed by the backlash.

Griffin leaned back into her chair. The Trix's actions and misdeeds were easily condemnable and yet she doubted the pure supposed evil of them. She hadn't initially thought so, but small doubt had grown over the years. Especially when she thought more about that snatch of conversation she heard when the Trix had first taken over Cloud Tower. After breaking the custom spell-lock, she had been scouting out the halls trying to figure out a safe way to evacuate her students when she encountered the younger two...

_"That was the lamest prep rally ever."_

_"Stormy. Shut up." Darcy fiddled with the texts she'd taken from the specialised section of Cloud Tower's library._

_"I'm serious. What kind of witch would want to follow us based on what she said?"_

_"Stormy, they're in college. They'll follow anything if it sounds dramatic or scary enough."_

_"Oh I'm Icy, and me and my sisters stole the 'Dragon Fire' from a newborn fairy." Stormy jeered mockingly making commas with her fingers. "We're going to use it to conquer all of the realms and to do that we first need to take over the three schools of Magix. Because taking over schools instead of governments is the best way to conquer shit!"_

_"Stormy!" Darcy yelled looking up from the book she was trying to decipher. "Shut it! I-Icy said what she needed to and no more. We don't need their real support right now."_

_"That isn't a good excuse!" Stormy yelled stepping uncomfortably close to the illusionist. "Icy promised our day of vengeance is coming! And that we're going to really defeat–"_

_"Ilse…I-I mean Icy doesn't want to get their hopes up, there's still the chance we could lose and even now there's too much at risk. We're not supposed to win this battle anyway."_

_"But–"_

_"No buts!" Darcy shoved her sister back as their enchanted cyclops-spider-spy came back. "We're not having this conversation again, especially here. Just focus on wrecking as much mayhem as possible once we finish tearing down Red Fountain and push them all to Alfea. We need to get the attention of the Light governments and make sure we stay there from now on." after squinting at the projected images she continued. "Come on, it looks like our visitors have arrived sooner than expected. Icy will want to start putting our plans into motion." and she left in huff much to Stormy's scowling._

That was the closest Griffin possibly heard about their "true" intentions. But more than that, it was the name that stuck in her mind. It was the mention of that name which made her take care not to indicate she knew of what she had heard either to kings like Oritel, gullible half-wits like Faragonda, even the Trix themselves.

Ilse…wasn't that the name of the firstborn daughter of the Witch King? Not that his family had been king of anything for a long time; the first Company of Light had overthrown them in the name of civilisation centuries ago. They had been on the run ever since, as the conquering realms came up with varying reasons to either imprison or kill them over the years. Details about the dethroned family and witchkind's lost history were passed orally and in utmost secrecy from one generation of witches to the next. Official history was written by the victors after all.

Toppling the occupying powers and returning the shadow realms to that family's rulership was what made Griffin join the Ancestral Coven in the first place. Yet destroying everything else to make that dream possible was a cost too high. In reflection, Griffin realised she had fled the Coven only due to Faragonda's pleading, who had been convinced restoring the shadow monarchy was an evil gambit. Maybe if she had stayed longer, things would have turned out differently. Griffin still felt responsible for the Witch King's death as a result of her defection.

At any rate in the years since their first public attack, the Trix had made use of their infamy. The Light realms were too comfortable pinning the blame constantly on those three "criminals", becoming too bold in agitating ancient discriminatory hatreds.

Slowly but surely giving their more disgruntled subjects a banner to gather under.

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><p><strong><em>Author Notes:<em>**_ Yes Kendrick Lamar is a real person, hip hop artist look him up. And while the overall word count is going to be big, I'm trying to keep each section about different characters contained between 500-900 words._

_As for the content I know it's a little cliché, but the notion of eyes being the "windows to the soul" continues to be an interesting thought, hence inspiring the title for this chapter. The point of this chapter was to establish the differences between Bloom and Icy and I'm aware that I've taken some liberty in my interpretations of these two. "Fanon" and "Canon" debates aside, I see the official Winx Club show as the popular or public view of these characters, while my writing reveals the truth beneath these perceptions. Think of it like how the media reports on celebrities and public figures but there's probably a lot more going on behind the scenes that the rest of society does not see._

_In any case here are the differences I was exploring in this tale. Bloom is a celebrated heroine, having the popular ditzy personality to match. Yet contrary to her actions, Bloom's eyes are subversive and disinterested. In contrast Icy is viewed by society as a career criminal but her eyes are full of dominance and determination, like she is working towards something far more worthwhile and it might be the society that surrounds her which is the real problem. The point was to show that while people's outward actions can be interpreted in a number of ways, there is always a part of them that betrays their true intentions and feelings._


	2. Born from Violence, Born for Violence

**2: Born from Violence, Born for Violence**

_Prompt No. 20: "Alone in a world where cruelty has no standards makes you think dying is the only way to survive."_

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><p><strong>Icy<strong>

**[Word count: 898]**

Fondling memories was never good for a witch.

There were always terrible things lurking there, wasn't a surprise really. Societies across the realms kept them shunned and isolated. The level of contempt differed from place to place but the overall attitude remained remarkably the same. No matter how much "equality" was declared, the Magical Dimension had been built for light lovers. Not that witchkind and every other "Dark" affinity magic user helped the betterment of their overall image. But what else could they be; they were treated like animals and would behave no less.

Such was the endless cycle of misery. It was too cheap for the dominant governments to keep using witches and their ilk as scapegoats for anything that went wrong. Witchkind had been downtrodden for so long they just lived in contempt of the people surrounding them...and contempt of themselves.

Ilse saw it all the time and she hated it. Maybe if she hadn't had "better" years as a child, it wouldn't hurt as much.

Life was still difficult in the "better" years. Even for an ousted royal family, Ilse couldn't remember staying in an actual house. Granted they did have various hideouts they moved between, but Ilse's earliest memories were dominated by the time camped out on the twilight moors of Whisperia. The indulgent leaders of the "civilised" realms just simply assumed the moors were completely inhospitable, granting the fugitive nobles some security. They would have stayed there all the time if they could, but secrecy and supplies were costly.

The Trix's parents were not particularly warm but that didn't mean they weren't caring. But they were incredibly determined that their offspring had to be steeled for untold hardship. It was her father's fault they were raised that way. More than any of their predecessors, he wanted to reclaim their ancestors' lost throne. It seemed he would succeed, but he was fated to fail, horribly. At least there was someone to blame.

A minor lord in her parents' secret court toyed precariously with information concerning the lost power of an ancient amalgamation of infidels. Through the performance of a disgusting ritual he resurrected the Shadow Phoenix and the so-called Ancestral Coven. He chose to be reborn in their tainted darkness and serve himself rather than the Witch King.

Baltor.

They were just as surprised as anyone else when Baltor began his invasion of Domino. But thanks to him, his lover, Griffin, thought Baltor and the Witch King wanted to destroy everything and abandoned their cause, taking a number of supporters with her. His betrayal cost them dearly.

Still, the selfish lord failed and Domino fell, but Ilse's parents remained unprepared when other fearful supporters betrayed them again six years later, causing the occupying powers to come for their heads. Ilse was only nine.

_"I will be captured soon but do not hope. Your father and I will be dead and there will be no one else to protect you. Do not allow you or your sisters to be manipulated by our so-called supporters when they say you will play a role in 'peaceful' negotiations. You will be killed by the occupying governments. You must escape our supporters and trust no one."_

_"This is all your fault this is happening. You and dad's." Ilse said angrily. "If you weren't so stupid this wouldn't be happening."_

_Her mother didn't protest. Wounded as she was, she fell to her knees before her child. "I do not deny it. But from now on, you and your sisters must stay together. Only great strength and will shall inspire absolute loyalty in our subjects, which we clearly lacked." her mother's tears were desperate silvery ones. "I…I'm so sorry...there is nothing else…"_

Ilse wished her mother hadn't wept, she'd never seen her emotional before that terrible moment. Back then she thought her mother weak. Nowadays the memory made her irrationally angry. She'd torn herself away from her mother's embrace and dragged her sisters away without allowing as much as a final goodbye.

The ranks of shadow royalists thinned significantly with the humiliating capture, mock-trial and execution of their parents and their most devoted. But the worst was to come. So many lives were disrupted and ruined afterwards by the occupying powers, who used the situation to justify a crude and bloody campaign to stamp out any more "resistance". Alone and unshielded from such reality, Ilse and her sisters witnessed the sheer brutality of the mass slaughter and destruction.

How they survived and managed to scrape up enough to get into Cloud Tower was a miracle. And as much as they learned to play others and study their enemies, the experience had scarred them. They wouldn't say it outright, but to her sisters, Ilse had been the worst affected. Her sheer hatred for those responsible eclipsed their own.

Ilse hated Baltor and the cowards who betrayed her parents. She hated the occupying powers that had shamed her kind for untold generations. Yet she knew she'd need to be more than a vengeful woman to make her parents' dream a reality. Their dream to reclaim the Shadow Throne was all they left behind.

The mistakes of her parents would not be repeated. And as much as she was prepared to carve a bloody path onward, Ilse…no, Icy was determined that her losses would not be in vain.

They would not be in vain.

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><p><strong>Bloom<strong>

**[Word count: 900]**

_"PLEASE DON'T KILL ME! I-I DON'T WANT TO DIE!"_

Why were other people so noisy when they pleaded for their lives? Didn't they know it never made a difference? Certainly hadn't in her case.

Visions flashed in her mind. A dispirited world whose name was too worthless to remember, populated with distrust and miserable people living in the shadow of broken societies and tainted magic. Whatever cataclysm occurred there long before her birth, it had left a diseased legacy.

_"There's something powerfully wrong 'bout that little bitch. You sure you want her?"_

She didn't know the disease's name at first. Was she fated or born to have a reflexive immunity to it, she would never really know. There was only one time she came close to contracting it, when she was bought from the orphanage by a stranger. She heard the caretakers whisper he was a fugitive from worlds away. But they couldn't care less with the amount of coin paid and were glad to be rid of her.

Then she was alone with him. A man with ambitions as vast and black as the emptiness of space. At first she thought that he would use her as she had heard adults use little children. But he saw that _thing_ inside of her. He wanted it for himself.

His dark desires etched the name of the sickness into her mind. That rotting sickness seeped deep in its soil, air and the souls of the planet's inhabitants.

Fear.

From then on her life was spent either with him or in the solitude of a dark cell. His sadistic attempts to separate her flesh from the fire within took hours, time slowly turning into days and years. Time she did not see pass by as soon the man's experiments turned her blind. She soon thought that her very whimpers would be enough to kill her.

Until one day she opened her eyes. A dark haze greeted her, and she felt no pained flesh, no impulse to pant, nothing. She had to be dead. Then, two abysmal blue eyes pierced through the shadow, ready to consume her. She waited, almost welcomed the inevitability. But nothing happened.

The walls of her cell were wrought of a strange glassy metal. The realisation it was her reflection was surreal. Those azure eyes were her own. In that moment of awakening she almost felt pure, unfathomable. Untouchable.

She escaped him. The experience was like a ghostly dream and remained so even when she started to vaguely realise what she had done. Despite feeling as light as air, she began to experience faintness. She didn't even feel the hardness of the dry forest floor she slammed into.

_"I don't trust it. Could be a conjuration of the forest. These dead woods are corrupted after all."_

_"She looks…dangerous, and about to die anyway. Just leave her…it…whatever."_

_"No."_

_"Lady Vanessa, please…"_

_"I said no. We're taking her home with us."_

They weren't frightened of her, well, Lady Vanessa wasn't. The witch clan matriarch regarded her with curiosity and decided to let her stay, though hardly as an equal. Not that she minded it. Until Vanessa made her into a retainer, she was quite illiterate and devoid of speech. They went to great pains to make her strong not only in body but mind. And more importantly, they gave her a name, even if it was a silly nickname.

As a servant, the witches absolutely refused to teach her magic. But Vanessa gave her skills that even in later years would she would consider far more useful that what would be taught to her in Alfea. They were skills that ensured her survival, even after the witch clan perished at the hands of light fanatics.

_"What do we do now?"_

_"Now? Nothing. Our clan has been destroyed, my line dies with me." Vanessa coughed up more blood, life slipping away in her voice. "There is nothing else. You are free Bloom; you are free to live your life as you wish." _

_"F-free? But I don't want to be free! I don't know what to do when I'm free! Please don't leave me…"_

_Vanessa raised her head a little with fleeting disbelief. Even as death claimed her, she could make out the girl's tears. "Why are you crying? You never used…to…cry…"_

Die. Why did they all die? Why did they have to die and leave her all alone in this universe? With their deaths, Bloom felt numbed once more. But in a very different way than she did as a vagrant orphan.

For a long time she was lost and adrift. Even when Stella found her a few years later and Domino was reborn, the uncertainty and purposelessness remained. Then Bloom tried to pursue answers, slithering her way from the heights of power back to the mire of poverty from one end of the Magical Dimension to the other. Using and manipulating people where necessary to get what she needed.

Until finally, it became more of a game than anything else.

_"I DON'T WANT TO DIE…please. No…" _

_"You don't have a choice. Not anymore." Bloom replied._

_"Y-you monster." the woman whimpered._

_"Please, I didn't say** I **was going to kill you." Bloom rolled her eyes. "I'm just not going to save you."_

_"But…why?"_

_"Because there is no else."_

"No one but me that survives." Bloom thought over and over as she pushed past the vengeful crowd.

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><p><strong><em>Author Notes:<em>**_ Sorry, mini-essay ahead…once again I've taken the liberty to toy around with Bloom and Icy's histories. Icy is the daughter of a "Shadow" king and is trying to end the "Light" realms' dominance of the Magical Dimension and win more freedom for "Dark" affinity people. Bloom basically had a messed up orphan childhood which has moulded her into a very dangerous and curiously self-serving individual. Vanessa has been reinvented to be the matriarch of a witch clan that took Bloom in and was destroyed through the careless machinations of the "Light" realms._

_Thus this chapter focuses how personal circumstance, history and choices shape people into what they are. Essentially Icy and Bloom are two people that have come from harsh, unforgiving backgrounds marked with loss and valid needs for revenge. Yet there are subtle differences between the two, as suggested by the chapter title. _

_Icy is the one born **from **violence. This means that while there are plenty of bad and terrible things that happened to her, **violence is only a part of her**. She has found a way to aspire to being something greater than an uncontrollable mess of cruelty, kind of making her the **protagonist** of this story. Yet while I'm trying to show she has standards, Icy's flaw is that she's not afraid to use questionable means or violence to get her point across, and she's also unmovably hateful of a few things, hence showing how her past has shaped her personality._

_Bloom is born **for **violence. Her story is meant to provoke questions about how much one can blame circumstances more than the individual in question. Because she didn't have a single moment of stability for healthy personal development, experience has made her into a clinical psychopath – this essentially means Bloom is able to control her psychopathic tendencies depending on the situation but she remains pretty twisted on the inside. (There are more technical and better ways of describing Bloom's personality disorder I know, but shut up I'm trying to keep this simple-ish)._

_In this way Bloom is the **anti-hero**. By definition (and for clarification), an anti-hero is someone who lacks conventional nobility of mind, and who struggles for values not deemed universally admirable (this isn't the same as a villain). Bloom isn't out to take over the universe or change it, neither is she utterly consumed by vengeance. Her experiences in this story have made her a clever but apathetic individual **enthralled with violence**. I'm kind of in love with this idea, since her canon shallow personality acts like the perfect cover so there's a lot of potential there. _

_A further contrast between the two is that Icy's experience is mostly interpersonal, one for the sake of many. And Bloom's experience is quite personal, many for the sake of one. I guess that makes Icy's character simpler but it also works as an effective contrast between the two. While both utilize all manner of deception to disguise their purposes, Icy is straight-forwardly harsh and rational whereas Bloom is more of a wild-card, passionate and possibly unhinged. Two different flavours of violence that complement each other rather nicely._


End file.
